


Night Full Of Lumos

by lettersbyelise



Series: Wordless I Love Yous [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Clubbing, Dancing, Emotional Infidelity, Gift Fic, Light Angst, M/M, Minor Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley, Mutual Pining, POV Harry Potter, POV Second Person, Pining, Unresolved Sexual Tension, based on a tumblr prompt, wordless i love yous
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-14
Updated: 2019-03-14
Packaged: 2019-11-18 04:04:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18112904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lettersbyelise/pseuds/lettersbyelise
Summary: You didn’t expect to find him here, in this Muggle club with its rainbow-spangled walls. Or perhaps you did: there’s always been an element of truth to each of your instincts.





	Night Full Of Lumos

**Author's Note:**

  * For [anisstaranise](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anisstaranise/gifts).



> Dear [anisstaranise](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anisstaranise), thank you for your Wordless I Love Yous prompt “Rubbing the back of their hand with a thumb”.  
> Like, can you NOT. I could absolutely write 16337 versions of this. What did you DO to me.  
> I made it a bit angsty… I hurt myself a little. _C’est la vie._
> 
> Many thanks to @diligent-thunder and @coriesocks for looking this over!

You see him again at the three-year anniversary of the Battle, an early May night turned ethereal with the glow of many Lumos. The pale blue spells catch in his white-blond hair and you desperately, irrationally want to go to him. So you do.

“Hey.” You touch your fingers to his elbow.

He hesitates. “Potter,” he acknowledges you with a stiff nod, unsure where you both stand. You’re unsure, too.

Neither of you feel like speaking. Your shared silence and the dim light wrap around you like an Invisibility Cloak, intimate as a shelter, and you feel at home for the first time in years.

 

****

 

“Hello, Malfoy.” You can’t help your smile. Your friends, your fiancée, are mingling with the party-goers, but his loneliness attracts you like a Doxy to a flame. Alone in a corner, as though wishing himself invisible. He is anything but. His eyes, lit up from within. His hair, catching the flickering lights of the Christmas decorations, calling you like a beacon, reminding you of that first night full of Lumos. 

“You look good tonight,” you tell him, because it’s the truth. He’s always been beautiful, even at his worst. Sneering at you. Covered in mud from the Quidditch pitch. Bathed in his own blood, spilling from open curse wounds, on the stone of an abandoned bathroom. 

His smile is small, guarded, sad. But it’s still a smile. 

“Sit with me awhile?”

You do. And this time, you talk.

 

***

 

You didn’t expect to find him here, in this Muggle club with its rainbow-spangled walls. Or perhaps you did: there’s always been an element of truth to each of your instincts. 

This time, you don’t talk.

When you take the empty stool next to his, he smiles, eyes on his drink. He knows it’s you. You’re unmistakable— your curiosity spills out of you in pulses. Your hand slithers across the counter. Almost as if on its own accord, your thumb touches the side of his pinky finger resting on the polished wood. It rubs a tentative circle over the back of his hand. Another. Then another. A slow, unrequited dance. You’re breathless, so hard in your jeans that you barely dare to meet his eye lest he sees through you right away.

He takes you dancing anyway.

Your hands find their way to his hips, his arms wrap around your shoulders. You hold him close, you dance with him. His presence is a relief as intense as breaking the surface of water when you’re drowning.

“I want to kiss you,” you whisper, your breath ghosting over his lips.

“But you can't,” his voice is soft and wistful, like a dagger wrapped in silk. “Not like this.”

 

**

 

The rain hasn’t let up for two days. You idly wonder if it’s an omen.  _ A rainy wedding foretells a happy marriage,  _ Molly says. The dark, heavy skies might be telling you otherwise. Emulating what your parents would have had, should they have lived to have it—a long, happy marriage, three kids, an owl and a Crup—made sense when you were eighteen. It suffocates you now, living someone else’s life. 

“Harry?” She walks in while you’re staring at the incessant rain. You turn; she’s dressed in white, and you hate yourself. In your cowardice, you have to be brave.

“I can’t do it.”

Her face is white and still, carved freckled marble. She smiles slowly, anyway.

“I knew. I knew you wouldn’t.”

You close the distance, three quick steps. She hugs you tight.

“I love you,” you tell her, apologetic, helpless.

“I love you too,” she grins, eyes wet against your shirt. “Now go.”

“Where?”

“To him.”

 

*

 

The rain is pounding on your shoulders when you knock on his door. You’re drenched; you don’t care. He comes to the door. His mouth is a wary line but his eyes betray him. Your beacon. Your Lumos.

“Draco,” you grin through the rain and the tears. “Can I come in?”

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos and comments are lovely!
> 
> Original tumblr prompt and post [here](https://lettersbyelise.tumblr.com/post/183296647121/wordless-i-love-you-45).
> 
> Come say hi to [anisstaranise](http://anisstaranise.tumblr.com/) and [me](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/lettersbyelise) on tumblr!


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